August 25, 2025 ☼ The Intersection ☼ geoeconomics ☼ foreign policy ☼ geopolitics
Better integration with our East Asian neighbourhood was always important. It is now an imperative.
This is from The Intersection column that appears every other Monday in Mint.
I concluded my previous column arguing that the current geopolitical moment is similar to 1991 and that India would do well to do now what it did then: economic reform and Look East. Even if it were not for the problems with the United States, there has long been a case for a second round of economic liberalisation and engagement of India’s South-east Asian neighbourhood. Now they are both urgent imperatives.
While India has increased its engagement of South East Asia since the 1990s in several important ways, there has always been a certain distance between the two. This is perhaps because India motivations for engaging the region has primarily been geopolitical, with an eye on balancing Chinese power, while most ASEAN countries looked towards India as the second large geo-economic partner, after China. Thus geoeconomics was secondary for India, and geopolitics for ASEAN.
This misalignment of objectives is, in my mind, the underlying reason why India is engaged, but not integrated, into South East Asia. India was wary of entering any regional trade agreement that included China. ASEAN countries, except Vietnam and the Philippines to some extent, were lukewarm to a security relationship with India if that meant rubbing Beijing on the wrong side. This has led to a kind of sub-optimal equilibrium that exists to this day.
Now that the United States under the Trump administration has thrown out Washington’s East Asian playbook, India, ASEAN and other East Asian capitals have new opportunities — even imperatives — to recast their relationships. No US ally can take Washington’s security umbrella for granted. No ASEAN state can presume that the United States will continue to underwrite the security of the region. No country can be certain that its trade relations with the United States will not be contingent on extraneous political factors. In an age where economic power is being used coercively, ASEAN economies are heavily dependent on China.
The ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute’s 2025 survey shows, yet again, that few among the region’s elite think India has any political or strategic influence in Southeast Asia:“Approximately a third of ASEAN-10 respondents have reservations about India’s ability to contribute to global peace, security, prosperity, and governance (35.8%). However, this level of distrust is nearly matched by this year’s trust levels (35.3%), thus presenting mixed sentiments about the prospects of India’s role in the region.
Of the ASEAN-10 cohort that trusts India, 30.1% believe that it is a responsible stakeholder that respects and champions international law. This view is shared strongly in Vietnam (49.1%), Singapore (37.5%), Indonesia (37.3%) Brunei (32.5%), and Cambodia (26.4%). Almost a fifth (19.0%) of this cohort agree that India has vast economic resources and the political will to provide global leadership.
Among the…respondents who distrust India, 40.2% believe that India does not have the capacity or political will for global leadership. Next, 30.3% feel that India is distracted with its internal and sub-continental affairs and thus cannot focus on global concerns and issues.”
To win over Southeast Asians, New Delhi’s foreign policy needs to be entrepreneurial. New options have to be created. It is telling that thirty years after Look East started, India’s relations with Indonesia, ASEAN’s largest country and military power, are unremarkable. Elite Indonesians ranked India near the bottom when asked which of ASEAN’s dialogue parters is most relevant. This is a country with which India has deep civilisational links, mirrors our cultural diversity and pluralistic democratic values. It is also rightfully a neighbouring country, separated by a mere 180 km at the closest points in the Bay of Bengal. There are a number of reasons why the India-Indonesia ties are merely good. Without active courtship they will remain so.
Indonesia can be a vital anchor of a new regional quadrilateral security partnership that includes Vietnam, Japan and India, countries that have a common interest in countervailing Chinese preponderance. I recall many in New Delhi saying that a security partnership involving India and the United States, Japan and Australia was impossible before Shinzo Abe proposed the idea of a Quadrilateral Security Dialogue in 2007. Geopolitical conditions create the potential, but things materialise when someone takes the initiative and invests effort in making them happen.
Whatever might have been the reasons India stayed out of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) five years ago, there is now a case to re-examine that decision. New Delhi might not get the same deal as the one it walked away from at that time, but could we not push for an enlarged one that includes trade in services? The Indian market is relatively more attractive to RCEP member countries after the US raised tariff barriers. Concerns about Chinese exports are real, but it cannot be anyone’s case that all Indian industries must be shielded from Chinese competition for all time.
Staying out of the East Asian economic bloc is a recipe for isolation that India cannot afford.
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